noun: A bench at which practical work is done

Monthly Archives: April 2014

MERG provide a couple of kits intended to be used as practice for surface mount soldering. This is my second go at this, and the first working attempt:

My first attempt failed because I wasn’t familiar with how pin 1 on the IC was identified. I now know it is the chamfer along one side. My first attempt had the IC the other way round, and rapidly burned out without flashing the LEDs, as this circuit is designed to do. For a £3.60 kit, it seemed like a good value way to learn the lesson. The instructions did explain all this, but somehow it still didn’t sink in without the practical lesson!

I want to explore the options that present themselves when lots of my layout wiring is digital. Step one is to drive trains via a PC.

MERG have a set of kits for a system designed around the CAN bus. This is the ‘DCC command station’ and a USB to CAN interface module. The loco lurking in the background moved under the power of this system earlier tonight.

Now I want to build a handset so that the computer is optional. The kit MERG have will mean I need to get the knack of surface mount soldering by hand.

This also means JMRI is installed on my PC again. It’s nice to see how much that has updated recently!